Football fans blacked out in DirecTV dispute

A dispute between DirecTV and WSVN-Ch.7 left approximately 270,000 customers… (Illustration; Photo of…)

January 15, 2012|By Juan Ortega and Tom Jicha, Sun Sentinel

The weekend became a total washout for Broward-Miami Dade football fans with access only to DirecTV. Approximately 270,000 households fall into this category. Palm Beach is unaffected.

Sunday’s NFC playoff game between the New York Giants and Green Bay Packers joined Saturday’s New Orleans-San Francisco thriller as a casualty of the retransmission dispute between DirecTV and WSVN-Ch. 7, an affiliate of Fox, which televised the games.

However, many sports bars, which use DirecTV to get the NFL Sunday Ticket, improvised with rooftop antennas, rabbit ears and backup cable to bring in the games and salvage a big revenue weekend.

WSVN pulled its link to DirecTV Friday at midnight and says it will remain off the satellite system until an agreement is reached.

This puts the highly touted new Fox series “Alcatraz,” which debuts Monday, the return of “American Idol” on Wednesday and all WSVN’s local newscasts into jeopardy. If the disagreement extends that far, next Sunday’s National Conference championship game, which determines one of the teams in the Super Bowl, could also be blacked out in DirecTV homes.

The negotiations remain stalled with neither side budging. DirecTV sent a letter to WSVN about a half-hour before Sunday’s kickoff asking that WSVN lift the blackout for the football game.

The letter, signed by DirecTV executive Daniel Chang, began, “It’s extremely unfortunate that we’ve been unable to come to terms to extend our retransmission consent agreement and that you continue to refuse our requests to keep the Miami and Boston [WSVN has sister stations there] channels on the air while we negotiate, so our customers, and your viewers, are not affected by this dispute.”

It concluded, “Innocent viewers should not be deprived of this programming while we resolve our business dispute. We ask you to do the right thing in this matter and we look forward to hearing your affirmative response.”

That didn’t happen. WSVN general manager Robert Leider said that when the letter was received, “We tried to see if they wanted to negotiate. They didn’t.”

Leider reiterated that WSVN is asking only for fair market value, which he knows from other deals his station has signed with other program transmitters. “We did seven deals in Boston and all were for more money than we’re asking from DirecTV.”

DirecTV contends WSVN is asking for three times what it is getting from Comcast, the biggest cable company in South Florida.

Leider said this is true but only because its in the midst of a contract with Comcast, which will be up for renegotiation in July.

This means Conmcast homes might be confronted by a similar situation this summer.

An argument with DirecTV that left a local FOX television channel dark is drawing sharp criticism from many satellite subscribers, including football fans eager to watch this weekend's NFL playoff games.